WITH another drunk reveller dead, heartbroken Jane Hales has revealed the alcohol tragedy which tore her family apart as a warning to others.

Like thousands of parents, Jane watched as her child left home for university full of hopes for the future.

But the dreams ended in despair, and now she has opened her heart to tell how a single night of binge-drinking left her beloved son Simon severely brain damaged.

Jane has decided to reveal her family’s tragic story to warn other young people of the dangers of excess alcohol.

The heart-felt plea comes just days after alcohol took the life of Daniel Sweeney, who on Tuesday plunged to his death from the wall of a car park at Newcastle Central Station.

CCTV footage showed the 20-year-old, from County Mayo in Ireland, apparently drunk and staggering in the early hours of the morning before disappearing over a ledge.

The death came just as a hard-hitting report by a former drugs adviser was published, claiming booze wrecks more lives than heroin and crack cocaine.

Jane’s son Simon, 21, a Newcastle University student, was an ordinary, fun-loving teenager when a booze-fuelled night destroyed the social life he so enjoyed.

He was on a Students’ Union night out when he fell off a 20ft wall he was trying to climb near the city’s Legends nightclub.

He was in a coma for five weeks after the accident, in October last year, then spent two months in a head injury unit, but doctors couldn’t prevent him suffering brain damage from which he will never recover.

Most of his days are spent at a rehabilitation centre an hour away from his family home in Oakham, Rutland.

His mum, Jane, said: “If Simon hadn’t been drinking he would have come home sooner instead of trying to get over a wall.

“Simon is very different now. He will never be the same person again.

“It’s tough, because he now understands what happened to him had a huge impact on his life. Simon was just a normal boy on a union night out - he drank just as anyone else did.”

In August more than two million people tuned in to watch the Channel 4 documentary My New Brain, which chronicled Simon’s story.

Camera crews were filming when he awoke from his coma and struggled to learn how to talk, walk and even swallow again.

While Simon was in a coma, friends and family rallied round to show their support, creating a Facebook group called Wake Up Simon.

“It has been difficult. Simon has memory problems and anger-management problems that are totally out of character,” Jane said.

“People really do need to be careful.

“Drinking to excess is a really stupid thing to do.”

This week a report by a former drugs adviser claimed booze wrecks more lives than heroin and crack cocaine.

Author Professor David Nutt’s findings have been welcomed by North East liver specialist Dr Chris Record, who said the conclusion was long overdue.

Dr Record, who works at both Newcastle General and the city’s Royal Victoria Infirmary, said: “The scale of the problem of alcohol is much greater than the problem of drugs,” he said.

“About 16,000 people a year die either directly due to, or from causes attributable to alcohol.

“It far exceeds numbers of drug-related deaths. People in their 20s and 30s are now dying from alcohol.

“Young people drink huge amounts. The commonest cause of death in young people is alcohol,” he explained.